Travel control devices for vehicles such as automobiles which have been known include travelling trajectory control devices which control a travelling trajectory so that a vehicle travels along a target trajectory, or lane keeping devices which prevent a vehicle from deviating from a travelling lane by deciding amount of lateral deviation from the travelling lane. In these travel control devices, an automatic steering control which automatically steers steerable wheels by a rudder angle varying device is performed, irrespective of whether or not steering operation is being performed by a driver.
The automatic steering of steerable wheels by a rudder angle varying device sometimes causes a situation so called N (neutral) deviation in which the relationship between a rotational position of a steering wheel and a rudder angle of steerable wheels is different from a proper relationship. Therefore, there have already been suggested various N deviation modifying controls for reducing N deviation at the time of terminating an automatic steering control in a travel control device which automatically steers steerable wheels.
For example, JP 2007-196808A describes an example of travel control device which is configured to take a predetermined time in performing an operation of moving a steering input device such as a steering wheel to a predetermined position, when a steering mode is transitioned from an automatic steering mode to a manual steering mode.